Matthew Rosenberg

Matthew Rosenberg is a national security reporter for The New York Times who is based in Washington. He covered Afghanistan until last year when he was expelled from the country at the order of President Hamid Karzai. It was the first expulsion of a Western journalist since the Taliban ruled Afghanistan.

Before being expelled from Afghanistan, Mr. Rosenberg’s reporting exposed how the C.I.A. had made monthly cash drops at the office of Mr. Karzai for more than a decade, provided a rare detailed account of an attack by Afghan solders on American troops and revealed how Afghan intelligence officials tried to cultivate the Pakistan Taliban for use as a proxy force against Pakistan. He also covered Afghanistan’s first international boxing match, which he christened the Squabble in Kabul.

In between trips to the front lines and stints in the press boxes of Afghan sporting events, Mr. Rosenberg also managed to slip in a fly fishing trip to the Panjshir Valley, north of Kabul. There, he was thoroughly outdone by Afghan kids who used bamboo sticks for poles. They hooked fish after fish. Mr. Rosenberg, with his pricey fly fishing gear, caught nothing.

Prior to joining The Times, Mr. Rosenberg was a correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. While at The Journal, he interviewed Sirajuddin Haqqani, the leader of what is considered one of Afghanistan’s most potent insurgent factions, and uncovered the massive amount of cash that flowed daily through Kabul’s airport in recent years, prompting the temporary suspension of $3.9 billion in American aid to Afghanistan. He also was part of the Journal team that covered the 2008 attack on Mumbai.

Mr. Rosenberg got his start as a news clerk at The New York Times before moving on to The Associated Press, where he reported from South Asia, the Middle East, East Africa and the Caribbean.

Mr. Rosenberg was born in New York and graduated from McGill University in Montreal.

Afghanistan’s attempt to gain leverage over Pakistan by cultivating an alliance with the Pakistan Taliban was discovered by the United States, which raided a convoy carrying a senior militant in the latest flash point between the nations.